THURMAN'S DIVORCE TIPS -

FAMILY CODE SECTION 770: AVOIDING TRANSMUTATIONS

Many people have heard that the fact of marriage doesn't impair their
separate property rights in what they owned prior to marriage, or possibly
acquired during marriage with their separate property funds, but for the
most part it just isn't true. Probably the strongest protections favor
gifts and inheritances received from third parties during marriage, but
even then all too often the recipient spouse commingles such funds with
community earnings and then finds they've got expensive proof burdens
to trace these funds possibly over periods spanning years, or numbers
of different joint deposit accounts, in order to recover them.

The most common two situations where a spouse gains an interest in the
separate property of the other is (1) with family residences with mortgages
that are paid down with community funds during the marriage and (2) where
real estate is refinanced and the other spouse is added to the record
title, possibly simply to protect them as "joint tenants" in
the event of death. I've written extensively about these subjects
throughout this site - try the search engine at upper right to learn more.

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case or situation. This information on this website is not intended to
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